A Primer on Private Equity at Work: Management, Employment, and Sustainability

February 2012, Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt

A new working paper by Eileen Appelbaum of CEPR and Rosemary Batt of Cornell University pulls from a widely-cited body of research to illuminate some of the major controversies surrounding private equity including whether private equity creates or destroys jobs, whether it provides better returns than the broad stock market to investors, and whether the debt burden assumed by firms acquired by private equity substantially increases the risk of bankruptcy.